The Secret World Is Now Free-To-Play

The Secret World is now free-to-play, and has even been branded ‘Pay Once, Play Forever’ as the trailer below denotes.

Unlike Star Wars: The Old Republic before it, there were no warning signs of The Secret World’s inevitable switch to free-to-play, but then that would be assuming the change is some kind of failure. Not true.

The Secret World is still very popular and is even gearing up for the next big content drop that is tied into the Mayan end of the world.

In the press release announcing the ‘removal of a subscription requirement’, Funcom’s game director Joel Bylos said “Most players end up having a ton of fun once they delve into the myths and legends of ‘The Secret World’, and we believe the game has the potential to be even more successful without the subscription entry barrier.”

He then described the move as “ambitious and very exciting”.

Despite there being no ‘complicated rules’ to this change, there will still be a Membership subscription. For 10 USD/Euros a month you’ll be able to access as-yet unspecified bonuses that can be spent in the in-game store.

This includes the Time Accelerator, which will increase XP gained for one hour of each day and a 10% discount on all in-game items.

It’s also worth noting that the official announcement page suggests that future ‘issues’ will be available as DLC. The page describes them as “optional” and will include new weapons, missions and story arcs. Optional or not, this could get messy.

Still, we’re big fans of the game, as you’ll see in our The Secret World review, so if you haven’t yet tried the game there’s really nothing stopping you now.